My Messy Desk and Happy New Year!

As the new year approaches, My virtual desk is as messy as ever. Usually every two or three days I make time to clean it up because I routinely am working on what feels like 5 different things at the same time. I keep telling myself its not going to happen again and I am going to work in a more organized fashion and then at some point it just goes straight down hill. For me it is almost always when I am digging for images or taking a lot of pictures for work or writing a lot. But I need to stop making excuses for my hyper-active mind. It happens a lot.

Truth is my hands and mind need to most always be in motion and be busy doing. I just can’t sit still quite honestly. And even as I get older little has changed.

When I was very young my kindergarten teacher, Ms Sabbath, told my mom she thought I was hyper-active. My mom told her to give me more to do. And she was right. I need a lot to do to wear my brain and energy level down enough- especially to fall asleep. It’s my father’s genetics at work for sure. My fathers side of the family all think fast (like I do), talk fast, (like I do), work for themselves ( like I do) and can’t sit still either. Some people snore really loud. Other people watch sports all weekend. And then there are people like me who relentlessly think and do.

I get to the point where I wonder when I can’t shut it off, or tame it down, if the things you love most really have to squeeze the life right out of you? And if they do, will you still love them until they die? Too many big questions. I know. I think it’s time for some spiked egg nog or something.

But all kidding aside, that would describe 2017 for me. I have run myself to an all time record of raggedness with my thinking and doing this year. I have never gotten sick this many times in one year. I just have worked myself to the bone, one too many times, and then sworn off that it won’t happen again only to repeat it all over again. I have taken several breaks, otherwise called ‘vacations’ too, and used them to fully restore myself only to do it all over again. Sigh.

Its like a force outside of me almost that I have to negotiate with on a daily basis. Obsessions are very messy complicated things and high energy isn’t something you can just simply stop or change about yourself because others point it out in you. These gifts we are given sometimes don’t even look like them to us or strangers or our family or friends. But if we don’t use them and embrace them they can’t help shape us into the person we are most meant to become.

And God knows ‘Why? or How Come? are indeed the my most repeated questions I ask on a daily basis. My curiosity to understand others, and myself, is insatiable. And my desire to help, where I see I can, unyielding. And all of the above are often very appreciated and equally sometimes not appreciated at all.

On that note, it has taken my husband 2 years to come to terms with my launching Sana’s Kitchen with my co-founder, Sana Tariq Khan in Pakistan. Not because he does not believe its an amazing business, or the fact that she is Muslim or anything like that. It’s just he, like most of the rest of the world, worries about safety and Pakistan being in the same sentence together.

And quiet honestly I can’t say I would have picked it. But I didn’t pick it- it picked me. And I chose to open the door. That decision alone has cost me a few friends this year too. Some of whom refused to stay friends with me on my Facebook page, and some who stopped communicating with me altogether because they were tired of Pakistani men private messaging them and because they didn’t understand or see the value I see. I find their reactions really interesting and strange too. To each his own, but had this situation never presented itself, I would not have grown enough myself to learn about new cultures and how much we all are the same and different at the same time. And we let those difference divide us, instead of embracing possibilities together. We are so much stronger together.

I have also learned how stubborn and pig headed most Pakistani men are. And how the women who love them have come to be so repressed.

I have also learned a lot this year about opening yourself up to new opportunities and speaking your mind anyway. If you don’t, nothing changes and you will too become repressed. And it’s true that when you do, a whole new set of challenges arise cause you enter into situations you simply don’t understand or know. Its exhilarating and profoundly exhausting all at the same time.

As this year winds down, I find myself reflecting on some new truths I am embracing as a result of my experiences this year.

#1 Being tired and alive and thinking and doing too much is far better than the alternative. Every time I complain about feeling overworked and thinking too much in 2018, I am going to remind myself that its a reflection equally of the best of me and offers a great value and worth to many.

#2 I am embracing a no asshole rule. Part of my fear in moving deeper into the angel and investment space has been with some of the asshole investors I have read about and some of whom I have met and would rather not know. In 2018 I am going to confidently keep walking towards those who are kind, and collaborative and willing to share and away from those who’s egos fill up the room. I don’t have to work with anyone who is an asshole no matter how much money they have or how many companies they have taken public. Its simply not cool or fun to do so and I won’t.

#3 I am going to learn to accept my messy desktop as a sign of my own inadequacies and imperfections. Growing up with a perfectionist, my mom, I learned a few things about it myself. As long as I can find whatever I am looking for on my desktop, I am going to embrace my messiest self.

I hope whatever you look at in your life that makes you cringe, or makes you feel sad about who you are, are things you will choose to see differently or simply embrace. The best of us, can also be the worst of us. And the things that make us happiest can kill us.

All we can do, is do the best we can and try to have empathy towards ourselves and others and be kind to ourselves. That’s enough and we are enough.

Happy New Year to you all and may your 2018 be filled with hope, and love and light.